


Now Thrive The Armourers

by Dustseeing (dustseeing)



Category: Henry VI - Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 3 - Shakespeare, Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:52:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustseeing/pseuds/Dustseeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard III is shaped by his own armour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Thrive The Armourers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



It is almost the end of March, yet it seems as if winter has stayed as long as it dares. It is cold, so cold that Richard can barely keep warm in the depth of his tent, though for his squire the fire has made the tent a veritable bath-house. Richard loves the confines of the canvas, he has always felt comforted by heavy swaddling cloths, tight-wrapped steel, close as the tomb. And yet it will not do to linger. They should be marching now, to revenge his father, his fallen brother, but Edward has not yet dared. He is waiting for some signal, some moment that will indicate-What? Some hint of God’s favour, perhaps, though it’s hardly as if Edward had ever given God more than courtesy’s glance.

In the corner of the tent is a lump of meat, raw and ready. He had asked the camp cook for it, as if to give it to his dog, though Richard has no dog (he makes a note- a dog will suit him, a lean hunter to sniff out his foes). Richard has made a lesson of it for himself, a sort of England in dead form. Between the red sinews are marble-lines of white fat and, beneath the surface, the hard sliver of bone that forms a spine from end to end. He has been watching a fly circle it, then another, then another, until the corner of the room. He hopes they will lay maggots, will bury themselves deep in the dead flesh of England and make it their sustenance.

A shout outside. They must begin to arm. His squire, already as tall as Richard, and threatening to grow far higher, has his armour ready. His aketon first, a pure white that mirrors his own flesh. Without his armour, Richard’s form is half-sloughed off, a white maggot-flesh that threatens to fall into a mire of its own making. He grasps the between his fingers- fingers raw and burned even in the womb, as if he had passed through hell-fire to claw his way out. The fires of hell would be of some comfort now, he thinks, as he begins to pull on his armour. His servant, one of the Ratcliffe brood, helps him. The boy has already become familiar with his quirks and strange twists of the body- too familiar, thinks Richard, and they even share the same name. Something will need to be done- though Richard isn’t sure whether he envies the shapely boy, or simply hates him. He imagines him consuming Ratcliffe, taking his body over. And yet- does he not already have Ratcliffe within his grasp? What he orders, Ratcliffe does, without fail, doing what Richard’s strong mind cannot will his weak flesh to do. It’s a little taste of power, like blood in the water, and like the leech he is, Richard is drawn to suck and drain.

He shakes the thought aside with a shudder, returns to his arming. The aketon, a stiff jacket, helps keep his flesh in check, though it’s his mind that leaches out, drawing in a little sustenance from the surrounding worries of war. Over it goes the pixane, its heavy chainmail made for him. Even for a man twice his age it would seem big, but it drapes over the hump of his back, the slow snake curve of his spine rearing up out of his body. The armour was made for him by his brother’s command, down in London- for London has always loved the House of York. It is painted- black, edged with the white of York- and yet he hopes that it will be stained Lancaster-red by battle’s end.

As the vambraces, the cuisses, rerebraces cover him, he feels his strength growing. He is being put together, an alchemy of the body that turns him from lumpen lead to burnished gold. They say that bears are born like-wise, a tallow-flesh form to be licked into shape, and Richard glories in war, his rough bear-mother, that has formed and shaped him such as he is.

On to his horse now. It raises him above the masses. What need he of an unwithered hand when a beast will bear him on his back? He listens to the men around him. Someone wonders whether the young York would be of more use as a gunstone than a fighter. Richard grins, joins in with a jest- harsh jests, for hard men. To his brother the courtiers, the popinjays and perfumes- Richard finds his court amongst these men, these groundlings, his own true audience. Their insults are formed from the fear of battle, not from true hate (for Richard knows well the jests that come with a lady’s smile and underneath them, hard and bloody steel. Better to make those words his armour and his arms. When he wins the battle, kills his father’s murderer, bestows a kingdom on his brother- then his family will be forced to swallow these words.

He encourages the men to insult him, savours the insults, makes of them a catechism.

_Lump of foul deformity_. Very well, he is a lump. Half-shaped, rotten, and yet a very source of life. The snow has fallen steadily, making the earth underneath a treachery. Solid, mire, slippery and suddenly firm in places.

_Unfit for any place but hell_. Very well, yet is this place not hell already? As he stalks through the battlefield there are dead men underfoot, the crush of bones and piss and sweat and shit steam in his nostrils, the reek of fear of charnel-rats.

_A poisonous, bunch-backed toad_ \- but poison has its uses. Hold a toad in the throat and it will cure a cold.

_Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile_. Well so he is, but what of that? The deepest pit holds the freshest water.

_A knot you are of damned blood suckers_... And Lancaster’s blood he will drain, and call it a justice and a mercy.

_Thy mothers name is ominous to children_. But most ominous of all to Richard, whose father loves him and whose mother has born him with the very worst of insults. False glass, she calls him, and sees in him a reflection of all Edward’s iniquities, lust-full, spite-full. He is the distillation of all his brothers, and only dead Rutland was pure.

_Hedgehog_ \- Richard snorts at that. To bear his prickles upon his back, is to be armoured. He cannot see it as an insult.

He kills. He worms his way into other men’s armour, he impregnates men with his dirk, makes them give birth to stillborn Englands. If Clifford was behind a brazen wall, he would find some gap, he would still pierce him with a needle to find their heart. But no needle is needed, a single deep thrust suffices. When he finds Clifford again, following a trail of blood on blood, his brothers join him. Edward, George, and their God-father Warwick. His is the victory, his is the wound that revenges the House of York.

They have torn Clifford’s head from his spine. He would give his good right hand to do so again. Could any victory taste sweeter than this? His throat is ragged, raw as scraped flesh. He pants for water. Richard scoops a handful of bloody snow from the ground, lets it melt in his gullet. Exhausted, he sinks to the ground amongst the dead, and begins to sleep.

In his dream, the mound upon his back is England’s hills, his spine is the Pennines, he is made anew. He reaches down, lets his twisted hand touch the earth. That soil is new soil. Leaves and shit and mulch from one year to another to keep the soil happy. Rain and freshwater, like blood beneath the skin. A good soil is the slow digestion of year after year, a serpent that eats but once a year. Dead leaves become mulch and mulch becomes soil, and all becomes as it was, so that on each day from year to year he wonders if any time has passed. The land takes it all in. Richard drinks it deep, earth and blood alike.

He digs deep, digs his hand in as deep as he can, until he feels as if the earth will consume him, and future ages find him digested until spat out. Feels the hard rock beneath the skin of the earth. Traces it with darkened finger tips, feels out the curve and the crack and the ridge and knows it for his own skull, there beneath the skin of England. Corn stubble for hair, clay for flesh, rock for bones. And deep down, pulsing, the brainflesh of memory and imagination that demands of him all he can give. And what will he sacrifice instead, if his body is not enough?

Amongst the dead, Ratcliffe peels the armour from him. It comes away like a carapace, and the light of three suns hurts his flesh. His armour will be hung up for a monument, and without it Richard is naked, vulnerable. Only shadows are now left to hide him, only insults and words can be his barbs.


End file.
